I’m 36, live in the UK and I’m paid pretty well for my location as a software engineer specialising in testing (SDET), I’m in fintech at the moment but have tried other domains. I went to fintech because I worked in a healthcare company and although I enjoyed it, a lot of it felt like the same s***, so I figured I may as well get paid a slight premium and increase my earning to give.
Nearly ten years ago I discovered financial independence, I was working in London, my then-girlfriend (now wife) got sick and had to move home from university. I wasn’t in love with my job so tried to get home quickly as well and as I was going to give up the route to riches I was previously going to take, I ended up googling and discovered MMM etc. This also trashed my most effective earning to give model as contracting for banks at the time was particularly lucrative.
I took another job in tech but a slight sidestep in role, around this time I also read Cal Newport’s So Good They Cannot Ignore You and used that as my work ethos. Chase learning, gain skills, make bank. It did kind of work, I’m well paid but the passion and enjoyment he claimed would develop, well it hasn’t for me.
This has somewhat dejected me. I lack a north star, a purpose to my work and as a result, it’s eating me up. I feel like what I do is only really useful to large corporations, so if I actually get to financial independence, all the effort was kind of a waste. For example, I look favourably upon data science as theoretically even if you retired, you could still mess with open data sets and help communities etc.
This lack of purpose or meaning in my work has grown in intensity since my son was born 6months ago. While looking around to help, I found some copy on a sale page that sums up how I’m feeling right now:
”x was a high achieving mom with 2 kids who had been promoted through multiple companies going to wherever her bosses asked her to. Eventually, she realized that she wasn’t happy in her role, but she also didn’t know what she wanted to be doing. The only thing she did know was that if she was going to be spending time at work away from her family, she had to love what she was doing.
we helped her intentionally clarify how she wanted to spend her time,what gave her purpose and what she couldn’t stop doing even if she tried.”
Can anyone set me on a path toward solving this? Sometimes I get so wound up and ruminate on it, it can be quite agonising, despite being such a good problem to have. I honestly feel like it’s the only piece missing from my life. Many say I should just be grateful to have a good job, I do agree, but I cannot frame it in a way that shuts up the rest of my brain from these thoughts/feelings around lacking a north star and a lack of purpose.
In the last few years I’ve made lists of options and have tested a few of the most realistic options like UX, Data Science, security work, teaching but through these experiments I don’t really feel further forward. Most have been interesting but none have called out to me that I must do that so I’ve just done a bunch of experiments that haven’t ruled anything out but haven’t hooked me in either.
Apologies for the word vomit, I’m looking at a structured career change programme right now but it feels indulgent and I expect will include a lot of work that I’ve already done.
I’m sorry, that sounds like a really frustrating position to be in. From my standpoint, getting to financial independence itself sounds impressive and worth it, rather than a waste. But I see why it wouldn’t feel that way given how hard you need to work on the skills. While I really like ‘So Good They Can’t Ignore You’, I do wonder if it’s setting this crazy high target to say the work you do should be work you’d do whether you got paid or not. It feels like the ‘meaning’ we get out of work will often need to be a bit broader than that – for example being what Jack mentioned that the purpose is coming from being able to donate more than you would otherwise and thereby help others. I wonder if you might enjoy this person’s take on how to find meaning in work?
I think what I’d take from what you’ve said and the above is that the other things you’ve been trying out sound pretty good, and that it could be good to think more about whether you could be happier doing any of them (for example, you mention data science as something that would be useful outside a corporate setting), and if so, going further into learning about or trying them. (By the way, on data science you might enjoy this podcast of ours.)
Personally, I found the Happiness Journal and the book Designing Your Life pretty useful for getting a better sense of my North Star, though you might not like that kind of thing!
^This. I have been battling with the exact same issue for the past few years. Thank you for putting the feelings into words so remarkably. Eagerly following this thread to see what other members have to share.
Surprised to hear the above is put into words well, it felt like incoherent babble. Glad to know I’m not alone and others here could potentially benefit as well. It seems like this is a common problem, most likely without a common answer but its really frustrating to not even have a loose direction.
I guess the experiments above I considered my loose direction but I feel like I’ve done years of them without truly moving forward
I’m actually strongly considering pursuing an earning-to-give route. I don’t expect to be in love with an ETG job, but I do expect to derive significant purpose and meaning from it because I would be doing a lot of good by donating more money. I would also plan to have at least a little bit more money to personally spend (although who knows maybe I won’t feel I need it).
If I pursue ETG I plan to put quite a bit of personal effort into determining where I should donate, which I expect to be quite an interesting, intellectually-stimulating and rewarding exercise. I also plan to share these thoughts with the EA community. I think I would identify as an ‘ETG-er’ and may even try to make a name for myself as someone who can advise others on where to give (I’m uncertain how well that might work out though).
Do you think that you may be able to pursue ETG and derive the meaning and purpose that I hope to? One really can do a tremendous amount of good through donating money and it sounds like you have good potential to do so.
I think a lot of the day-to-day feelings of fulfillment in high-impact jobs come from either: 1) being part of a workplace community of people who really believe in the value of the work, or 2) seeing first-hand the way in which your work directly helped someone. I don’t really think the feelings of fulfillment typically come from the particular functional category of your role or the set of tasks that you perform during the workday, so I wonder how informative your experiments with data science, for instance, would be with respect to the question of identifying the thing that you feel you “must do,” as you put it. If I had to guess, I’d speculate that the feeling you’re looking for will be more specific to a particular organization or organizational mission than to the role you’d be filling for organizations generally.
This rings true to me. I’ve been struggling a lot with the same sentiments that shicky44 expressed in the original post. I’m 35 and live in the US working in data science/machine learning (recently promoted to team lead, but was doing hands-on technical work before that). The problem that I’m facing is exactly that I don’t find my company’s work compelling or the culture that exciting. I don’t think the company does anything to make the world better and so I have trouble getting excited about it. Sure, there are days where I feel like I accomplished things and enjoyed addressing a particular issue with my team, but the positive feeling tends to wear off quickly.
The question that I’m trying to work out for myself is: would I be satisfied if I found a new job where I can earn-to-give, but at least at a company where there is a strong community culture even if the work isn’t directly impactful. Or, will I really only be happy in a job where the work is directly impactful. The second path feels trickier for me since my initial research on companies and jobs in this direction has suggested that I probably need a background in a field like economics or public policy. Is there a third way that I’m not considering?
I’m glad that the 80000 Hours team started this thread as it’s great to hear from others thinking about the same questions on a personal level.
I think lots of people can relate to this sentiment!
I could recommend having a look at Escape the City which provides a list of career opportunities for mid-career professionals wanting more social impact in their work: https://www.escapethecity.org/
If you are interested in short or long term volunteering with your tech skills, I can recommend a number of organisations that provide ample opportunities for this in the UK:
https://techforuk.com/ ”Tech For UK aims to enable people to transform British democracy through technology and digital media that impacts the systems not just the symptoms of its problems.”
https://democracyclub.org.uk/ ”We build digital tools to support everyone’s participation in UK democracy. Our services are trusted by organisations in government, charities and the media, and have reached millions of people since 2015.”
http://md4sg.com/ ”Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG) is a multi-institutional initiative using techniques from algorithms, optimization, and mechanism design, along with insights from other disciplines, to improve access to opportunity for historically underserved and disadvantaged communities. Members of MD4SG include researchers from computer science, economics, operations research, public policy, sociology, humanistic studies, and other disciplines as well as domain experts working in non-profit organizations, municipalities, and companies.”
Out of curiosity, how long did you do your experiments in UX / Data Science / etc. for? Maybe it would pay to try spending more time in these functions? You could transition to data science and work for a year and half, then work for a year in UX for example (maybe do a bootcamp as a refresher / to build career capital). Of course this is easier said than done—but I feel like it might take a long time before you can really assess how much a role aligns with your strengths, as it might take many months just to onboard to the role.
I’m in my 20s working as a software engineer for a large US tech company and I hope to transition to some other roles for a few years if possible before committing to one role.
Also, maybe it would be worth transitioning to a different company or team where you can feel that you work is having a greater impact on customers / on the world? I feel like it can be a bit hard to feel your impact as a software engineer because usually you are usually not client facing. But I imagine that your work might feel more impactful at a mission driven startup or if you are working as sales engineer and get to work with clients face to face periodically.
I’m 36, live in the UK and I’m paid pretty well for my location as a software engineer specialising in testing (SDET), I’m in fintech at the moment but have tried other domains. I went to fintech because I worked in a healthcare company and although I enjoyed it, a lot of it felt like the same s***, so I figured I may as well get paid a slight premium and increase my earning to give.
Nearly ten years ago I discovered financial independence, I was working in London, my then-girlfriend (now wife) got sick and had to move home from university. I wasn’t in love with my job so tried to get home quickly as well and as I was going to give up the route to riches I was previously going to take, I ended up googling and discovered MMM etc. This also trashed my most effective earning to give model as contracting for banks at the time was particularly lucrative.
I took another job in tech but a slight sidestep in role, around this time I also read Cal Newport’s So Good They Cannot Ignore You and used that as my work ethos. Chase learning, gain skills, make bank. It did kind of work, I’m well paid but the passion and enjoyment he claimed would develop, well it hasn’t for me.
This has somewhat dejected me. I lack a north star, a purpose to my work and as a result, it’s eating me up. I feel like what I do is only really useful to large corporations, so if I actually get to financial independence, all the effort was kind of a waste. For example, I look favourably upon data science as theoretically even if you retired, you could still mess with open data sets and help communities etc.
This lack of purpose or meaning in my work has grown in intensity since my son was born 6months ago. While looking around to help, I found some copy on a sale page that sums up how I’m feeling right now:
”x was a high achieving mom with 2 kids who had been promoted through multiple companies going to wherever her bosses asked her to. Eventually, she realized that she wasn’t happy in her role, but she also didn’t know what she wanted to be doing. The only thing she did know was that if she was going to be spending time at work away from her family, she had to love what she was doing.
we helped her intentionally clarify how she wanted to spend her time,what gave her purpose and what she couldn’t stop doing even if she tried.”
Can anyone set me on a path toward solving this? Sometimes I get so wound up and ruminate on it, it can be quite agonising, despite being such a good problem to have. I honestly feel like it’s the only piece missing from my life. Many say I should just be grateful to have a good job, I do agree, but I cannot frame it in a way that shuts up the rest of my brain from these thoughts/feelings around lacking a north star and a lack of purpose.
In the last few years I’ve made lists of options and have tested a few of the most realistic options like UX, Data Science, security work, teaching but through these experiments I don’t really feel further forward. Most have been interesting but none have called out to me that I must do that so I’ve just done a bunch of experiments that haven’t ruled anything out but haven’t hooked me in either.
Apologies for the word vomit, I’m looking at a structured career change programme right now but it feels indulgent and I expect will include a lot of work that I’ve already done.
I’m sorry, that sounds like a really frustrating position to be in. From my standpoint, getting to financial independence itself sounds impressive and worth it, rather than a waste. But I see why it wouldn’t feel that way given how hard you need to work on the skills. While I really like ‘So Good They Can’t Ignore You’, I do wonder if it’s setting this crazy high target to say the work you do should be work you’d do whether you got paid or not. It feels like the ‘meaning’ we get out of work will often need to be a bit broader than that – for example being what Jack mentioned that the purpose is coming from being able to donate more than you would otherwise and thereby help others. I wonder if you might enjoy this person’s take on how to find meaning in work?
I think what I’d take from what you’ve said and the above is that the other things you’ve been trying out sound pretty good, and that it could be good to think more about whether you could be happier doing any of them (for example, you mention data science as something that would be useful outside a corporate setting), and if so, going further into learning about or trying them. (By the way, on data science you might enjoy this podcast of ours.)
Personally, I found the Happiness Journal and the book Designing Your Life pretty useful for getting a better sense of my North Star, though you might not like that kind of thing!
^This. I have been battling with the exact same issue for the past few years. Thank you for putting the feelings into words so remarkably. Eagerly following this thread to see what other members have to share.
Surprised to hear the above is put into words well, it felt like incoherent babble. Glad to know I’m not alone and others here could potentially benefit as well. It seems like this is a common problem, most likely without a common answer but its really frustrating to not even have a loose direction.
I guess the experiments above I considered my loose direction but I feel like I’ve done years of them without truly moving forward
Sorry to hear about your struggles.
I’m actually strongly considering pursuing an earning-to-give route. I don’t expect to be in love with an ETG job, but I do expect to derive significant purpose and meaning from it because I would be doing a lot of good by donating more money. I would also plan to have at least a little bit more money to personally spend (although who knows maybe I won’t feel I need it).
If I pursue ETG I plan to put quite a bit of personal effort into determining where I should donate, which I expect to be quite an interesting, intellectually-stimulating and rewarding exercise. I also plan to share these thoughts with the EA community. I think I would identify as an ‘ETG-er’ and may even try to make a name for myself as someone who can advise others on where to give (I’m uncertain how well that might work out though).
Do you think that you may be able to pursue ETG and derive the meaning and purpose that I hope to? One really can do a tremendous amount of good through donating money and it sounds like you have good potential to do so.
I think a lot of the day-to-day feelings of fulfillment in high-impact jobs come from either: 1) being part of a workplace community of people who really believe in the value of the work, or 2) seeing first-hand the way in which your work directly helped someone. I don’t really think the feelings of fulfillment typically come from the particular functional category of your role or the set of tasks that you perform during the workday, so I wonder how informative your experiments with data science, for instance, would be with respect to the question of identifying the thing that you feel you “must do,” as you put it. If I had to guess, I’d speculate that the feeling you’re looking for will be more specific to a particular organization or organizational mission than to the role you’d be filling for organizations generally.
This rings true to me. I’ve been struggling a lot with the same sentiments that shicky44 expressed in the original post. I’m 35 and live in the US working in data science/machine learning (recently promoted to team lead, but was doing hands-on technical work before that). The problem that I’m facing is exactly that I don’t find my company’s work compelling or the culture that exciting. I don’t think the company does anything to make the world better and so I have trouble getting excited about it. Sure, there are days where I feel like I accomplished things and enjoyed addressing a particular issue with my team, but the positive feeling tends to wear off quickly.
The question that I’m trying to work out for myself is: would I be satisfied if I found a new job where I can earn-to-give, but at least at a company where there is a strong community culture even if the work isn’t directly impactful. Or, will I really only be happy in a job where the work is directly impactful. The second path feels trickier for me since my initial research on companies and jobs in this direction has suggested that I probably need a background in a field like economics or public policy. Is there a third way that I’m not considering?
I’m glad that the 80000 Hours team started this thread as it’s great to hear from others thinking about the same questions on a personal level.
I think lots of people can relate to this sentiment!
I could recommend having a look at Escape the City which provides a list of career opportunities for mid-career professionals wanting more social impact in their work: https://www.escapethecity.org/
If you are interested in short or long term volunteering with your tech skills, I can recommend a number of organisations that provide ample opportunities for this in the UK:
https://techforuk.com/
”Tech For UK aims to enable people to transform British democracy through technology and digital media that impacts the systems not just the symptoms of its problems.”
https://democracyclub.org.uk/
”We build digital tools to support everyone’s participation in UK democracy. Our services are trusted by organisations in government, charities and the media, and have reached millions of people since 2015.”
http://md4sg.com/
”Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG) is a multi-institutional initiative using techniques from algorithms, optimization, and mechanism design, along with insights from other disciplines, to improve access to opportunity for historically underserved and disadvantaged communities. Members of MD4SG include researchers from computer science, economics, operations research, public policy, sociology, humanistic studies, and other disciplines as well as domain experts working in non-profit organizations, municipalities, and companies.”
Out of curiosity, how long did you do your experiments in UX / Data Science / etc. for? Maybe it would pay to try spending more time in these functions? You could transition to data science and work for a year and half, then work for a year in UX for example (maybe do a bootcamp as a refresher / to build career capital). Of course this is easier said than done—but I feel like it might take a long time before you can really assess how much a role aligns with your strengths, as it might take many months just to onboard to the role.
I’m in my 20s working as a software engineer for a large US tech company and I hope to transition to some other roles for a few years if possible before committing to one role.
Also, maybe it would be worth transitioning to a different company or team where you can feel that you work is having a greater impact on customers / on the world? I feel like it can be a bit hard to feel your impact as a software engineer because usually you are usually not client facing. But I imagine that your work might feel more impactful at a mission driven startup or if you are working as sales engineer and get to work with clients face to face periodically.